Speaking to ifa, Caboodle Financial Services managing director Peita Diamantidis said a greater focus is needed from advisers on changing consumer behaviour, not just providing knowledge and expertise.
“Knowledge isn’t enough to change behaviour. The gap is inspiration and motivation and that’s why people still have money challenges,” she said.
“You and I know exactly what we need to do to be fit and healthy – eat vegetables and exercise, yet we don’t do it. For example, it might be that only until she falls pregnant will one woman get the motivation to quit smoking or only until a father finds out his daughter is going to get married will he get the motivation to lose weight.
“Knowledge is the first step but the gap at the moment is inspiration and motivation to take action.”
Senior executive of strategic partnerships at digital investment firm Quantifeed, Graeme Brant also told ifa that the reason the advice sector struggles to connect with and profit from the mass affluent market is because of its inability to make financial goals actively present in an individual’s everyday life.
“For example, with a fitbit, people are far more likely to run that extra kilometre. Unless you have constant engagement with something, no matter how important a goal is, it will get pushed to back of the mind beneath all of life’s other priorities,” Mr Brant said.
“The industry struggles to democratise wealth management for a significant proportion of the population and deliver advice engagement on the individual terms of each person.”
Mr Brant warned against advice businesses with a set-and-forget customer model, saying the future is in multi-faceted client bases who are engaged through technology that makes financial goals an ever-present part of their day.
“There’s obviously a significant proportion of the population who really want digital engagement for wealth management – they have digital engagement for every other aspect of their life and the advice sector is just playing catch-up,” he said.
Quite frankly, I’m just sick of wannabe’s using this industry and its various social media avenues as their platform to elevate their own agenda’s by constantly kicking the guts out of advisers every day….but I’m sure there’ll be another one spewed out tomorrow with more grandiose ideas.
Spoken like a person who has never been a financial adviser. Our job is so stressful and hard these days that’s its frankly amazing that we get done for our clients what we do. I agree with yogi and seriously it is people in IT that need to create the apps for us to use not the planners. What more do you want from us? The media just loves to complain and ask for more and more – I should just stop reading this garbage as it certainly isn’t a problem with me and my relationship with my clients
What a load of rubbish. Don’t push this back on advisers. Great advisers have been inspiring and motivating clients every single day. It’s what most advisers do. Advisers are not school teachers with the sole role of education. We advise, we plan, we motivate, we execute and implement and benchmark. What planet are these guys from. The disconnect between Australians seeking advice is the whole system. It’s people getting advice from accountants once a year at the end of a PAYG tax return meeting, it’s a lack of tax deductiblity of advice fees, it’s advisers being bogged down in red tape and compliance, it’s excessive advice fees, it’s consumers being turned off from advice due to four corners reports. It’s the media calling everyone a financial adviser. It’s advisers being forced to deal with a specific sector of the market because of the cost of providing advice. You fix compliance and red tape and I’m sure you’ll increase the number of Australians seeking advice. Don’t turn around and say we’re doing a crap job of inspiring people.
You have some good points here about other reasons why consumers are turned off and also overall confused about who we are, what we do, etc. However, I think a key message Peita is making is that there is a gap between getting the clients onboard or tuned in and them actually taking action and continuing with the good behaviours and habits we set out to educate them on. They may start strong but fall back into poor money habits or bad attitudes. I like the fit bit example, its like seeing a personal trainer and all the motivation and energy is there at the start and over time as you begin to do more and more you lose motivation and drive.
Having the fitbit is great because you are constantly re-engaged and thinking again and again about those drivers and good behaviours, because there is an easy way for this thing on your wrist to at least attempt to make you more accountable to actions and habits.
Does that make any sense?
There are some good points in here. I wonder if AR / VR will help bridge the motivation gap in the next 5 years. Would be interested to hear thoughts around this.
live now die young,otherwise someone else will take your life savings such as the big 4